Anne Donovan devoted her life to women’s basketball. The 6’8” star athlete out of Ridgewood, New Jersey found success at every level of the sport. Out of high school Anne received recruiting letters from more than 250 Universities, including a persona plea from Penn State’s Joe Paterno, but ended up selecting Old Dominion in 1979. Playing center, Donovan helped take the ODU Lady Monarchs to a championship in 1980. Anne averaged a double-double through her college career, aided by her size and athleticism.
When she graduated in the mid 80’s, the WNBA was still 10 years away from playing its first game, so Anne played for European professional teams in Italy and Japan. Anne brought home Olympic Golds playing for the US national team twice, in 1984 and 1988. She was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995. After her career as a player, Anne began coaching college ball working for her Alma Mater ODU and East Carolina University until she transitioned to coaching pro-ball with the short lived ABL in ’98. The next year she was recruited to coach in the WNBA working for a few different teams before leading the Seattle Storm starting in 2003.
Anne lead the Storm to a WNBA championship in 2004, her second season as head coach of Seattle. She continued to lead the Storm until 2007. She also coached the USA national team. They won gold medals in 2004 in Athens, and 2008 in Beijing, making Donovan the only woman to win a national women’s college title, win gold as a player, and win gold as an Olympic coach. This WNBA icon finished her coaching career with the Connecticut Sun in 2015. She passed away of due to heart failure June 13th, 2018.
